Tuesday
We begin with that one FOX blue-filtered promo where things are fast, then slow, as we highlight the remaining contestants. Nadia, Carrie, Vonzell, Bo, and Anwar look great, A-Fed looks chubby, Scott looks like a serial killer, and Constantine looks like a stage magician. Then Ryan's wearing another confusing t-shirt under a suit jacket, not to mention a big old grin, as we check out all the signs in the audience. They're getting kind of baroque. Ryan's working the scruff again and once more looks viable. Maybe he's twins and that's why he always looks one way or the other. Anyway, tonight it's Fresh 'n' Sassy Ryan, which makes the show vastly more enjoyable since, even though there's no point in him being there, he's still constantly on camera.
In reference to the horrible occurrence of Nikko leaving, he asks us quite seriously if we were "outraged," if we thought it was "a disaster," and the answers are yes. He reminds us that it's not fair to complain if you don't vote, and I get that, but I mean, if you agree with the elimination, you probably voted, and if you don't, you're used to hating the kind of people that voted. This is the first of, like, one hundred times he's going to shrilly demand that we vote and stop bitching, but I don't think it's fair to tell us not to bitch, even if we didn't vote, because whenever you're bitching about votes, you're bitching specifically about the fact that there are more people that disagree with you than not. And if you think about that too long, you will go insane. I think this is why Ann Coulter happened during the Clinton years. "Watching this show without voting is like starting a conversation with Randy." Randy's incensed at this, but doesn't actually know what Ryan means. "Pointless. It's out of love, Jackson." Dear show: Please at least have acrobats or go-go dancers or something so that the filler isn't so damned obvious.
Back to fake Wednesday, where this week's theme clues start with a hilarious picture of baby Constantine, which cracks Ryan up immediately because the baby's making that same stoned face that (sort of) grown-up Constantine is so fond of. People are so used to clapping their hands off and screaming whenever Carrie's name or image comes up that they even cheer for her baby picture. "You go, baby Carrie! Rock that bitch!" Anwar fakely guesses "nursery rhymes," which would actually kind of rock, in that this show is stupid as hell, but is still a fake dumb guess. Not even Anwar is so infantilized that he would believe that for a second. Ryan explains that the theme is "The Year You Were Born" and it's pretty funny as he says, straight-faced, "That's the year they made their debuton the world stage." The only person on this show that came out of the womb belting show tunes is Mikalah. And possibly Ryan. ("It's out of love, Seacrest.")
“ I don't know that she fully understands the elimination part, so she thinks she gets to write herself this blank check and be interesting and quirky and all college-freshman about everything instead of giving the people what they want. ”
Nadia "Confusion is Nothing New" Turner (tm Sburrious) sings the Crystal Gayle song "When I Dream" (1977, by Mac Davis) and introduces it by showing us some adorable baby pictures where her hair is just as big as it is now. That's the circle of life. She talks about how her look was totally extreme when she was a baby because her mom is nuts and awesome and from the Caribbean. It's hard to imagine Nadia as a child because she's so self-possessed that all I get is this creepy Spelling Bee vibe, or like a creepy Haley Joel Osment thing. Baby Nadia with a tiny briefcase and headshots, going from gallery to agency to brokerage talking about how she's "really excited about my current project, which is a really interesting drawing of a dinosaur from the Cretaceous Era, which I have chosen to render using a restricted Cray-Pas color palette. For this project, as a nod to the strict compositional approach of the Pop Art movement, you'll notice I've colored inside the lines only. That was a conscious deviation from my usual, more Impressionist style, as you'll perhaps remember from my series entitled Five Minute Portraits From The Strawberry Shortcake Coloring Book In Pink, Red and Green."
Sadly, nobody in the entire world except aiwop has ever heard this song, and unless I've been royally schnookered, aiwop is not a judge, who all three speak for us and our bemusement about this particular song choice. But hey, it's Nadia, and I've already bought my tickets to that ride. She sounds great and is connecting with the camera and is wearing a theme-appropriate red gathered sack dress. Appropriate because it's very '70s, but also because it gives you pretty much an obstetrician's-eye view, so it's like right now is the Year This Song Was Born. The hair seems even bigger than usual tonight. She's very pretty, and whatever, like, this song is so boring it's hard to remember that the TV is even on. It takes a lot to counteract my overpowering and natural love of Nadia, but this song is managing it. Some songs are so boring it's like you've heard it a thousand times, even if you haven't, and by the time you remember to listen, it's over.
She is really nervous about getting the judges' comments, because while she's cocky enough to self-consciously choose these boutique secret songs nobody's heard, she's also smart enough to know it could bite her in the ass at any time. Randy is wowed by the fact that, given an entire year's worth of songs, she managed to pick the most irritatingly obscure song she could. Somebody needs to explain to Nadia exactly who watches this show, and who votes, because I think she doesn't really consciously consider it a competition. She's used to being the best, and I don't know that she fully understands the elimination part, so she thinks she gets to write herself this blank check and be interesting and quirky and all college-freshman about everything instead of giving the people what they want, which is songs they've heard a million times before and are comfortable with, and then not deviate from what they expect to be hearing.
“ And she's right, but this is not the show for that. There is no show for that, because it would never get ratings, which is why TV is a sick beast that will eat your face, and she's old enough to know that by now. ”
I understand, because I have the same basic flaw, the fact that singing a banal song with a straight face might actually kill her. The one time she went for a song that wasn't so self-consciously "Nadia," she jacked up the arrangement so much, it made everyone in America really nervous, and she did this dressed like a member of the Misfits. (The truly outrageous ones, not the ones with the scary t-shirts everywhere.) She is literally unable to just sing a normal song and give it to you straight, because she's pretty sure she's above that. And she's right, but this is not the show for that. There is no show for that, because it would never get ratings, which is why TV is a sick beast that will eat your face, and she's old enough to know that by now. It's arrogant to assume that being the off-beat one is enough this year, considering how many people's strategies hinge on being the sore thumb one: you've got Bo, you've got Constantine, you've got Scottthe only people who actually belong here are Carrie, Vonzell, and maybe A-Fed, which means everybody is trying to stand out, and I've said this before, but I think the sophistication and the irony of her intent is asking a lot.
It's very Emperor's New Carnivale, this thing: "It's not TV at all, no, it'sNadia." And I don't think this is a Red v. Blue thing at all, because I think that's an oversimplified fallacy, but I do think there's a certain amount of coastal bias in the confusion, both of Nadia and by the parts of the country that were shocked by this week's results. When the bulk of the world's money, entertainment, and news come from New York and California, it's really easy to fool yourself into thinking that the whole country shares your worldview, because the nature of these things is to show you the truth of the world. But there's this whole other America, and it has more people in it, and they are not contributing to the bulk of American entertainment in a creative way. But they are voting, both on the phone and in booths built for the purpose, and in terms of Hollywood's circle-jerking assumption of being the one true face of reality, that real America is woefully underrepresented. No matter how many times America tries to explain -- through the success of Roseanne and the blue collar comedy franchise, through the presidential campaign, through fucking Scott Savol and the easily digestible Law & Order and CSI programming -- Hollywood and New York still think they have a lock, and are shocked, shocked, when this other America finds a way to make its presence heard. And if you, like me, are part of the Hollywood America, you're probably shocked by this too, every time. Because we'll never learn.
It's nice to say all these things about "Let Bartlet be Bartlet" and "raising the level of debate" and such, but is it really fair to assume this attitude when you can only maintain this by blinkering yourself to the true state of the country you live in? And when the other America is begging to be represented, in the entertainments we hurl at them, so that they're willing to vote for fucking Scott Savol in order to make the point? His is the face of American desperation. Also of the American bulldog.
“ Ryan, because he adores her, lies again that this was 'well said,' instead of 'painfully incoherent.' Nadia makes reality, y'all. ”
Anyway, sorry, but that's the scandal for this week, such as it is, and I've had to think about it a lot over the past few days. Nadia gently tries to remind Randy of who Crystal Gayle is ("Remember? With the long hair?") and Randy's like, "Yeah, I, um, know?" He tells her it was rough, pitch-wise, in addition to being utterly unknown and off-putting, and he "didn't love it." Paula wants to start with "the ups and the highs." Stop doing my job for me, Abdul. God. Paula backhands Nadia that she only shows up to the studio to see what Nadia's wearing, and I was overjoyed when I thought that was all she was going to say, but then she gabbles something about how she "wanted to be in there with the song, and felt it was kind of like [non-verbal]." Simon calls it the equivalent of musical wallpaper, how when you're in somebody's house you might notice the wallpaper, but you don't remember it. Good analogy, although I wish he'd explained that earlier because I wasn't sure what he meant by it when he used it before. He calls it an "appalling" choice of song and predicts she might be going home. He's not yet sure, I think, because she's first up and maybe he thinks the other seven will coincidentally suck.
Ryan tortures the language to produce a strangely-phrased encouragement: "A lot of people won't soon forget this wallpaper," he says. That sounds to me like something Krazy Kat would say, or like it would show up on the Yellow Kid's shirt. "If you liked this performance, tell your friends! If you didn't, turn blue!" That kind of thing. Nadia explains her song choice thusly: "It's a song about dreaming, and being a dreamer, and I've always been a big dreamer that makes reality, so this is a song that kind of represents, you know, about dreams, and who I am." Ryan, because he adores her, lies again that this was "well said," instead of "painfully incoherent." Nadia makes reality, y'all.
Back from commercial, the judges arewhat are they doing? Randy is poking Ryan in the shoulder, Paula is tickling his neck, and Simon is squeezing his shoulder tenderly. Then Randy starts throwing signs in the air, Paula sticks her finger in Ryan's ear, and Simon gently holds the other ear. "Don't play with me! I'm not a toy!" That's like the cutest thing he's ever said. I bet he's had to say it a lot, actually. They don't stop, and Ryan cracks a joke about how they couldn't make a list of hits from the year of Simon's birth, because the Billboard charts only go back to 1940. In the middle of this, Simon gets kind of invasive and puts his hand over Ryan's mouth, and Ryan twists his hand away, holding him tightly by the wrist, and forgets to let go. As my friend Ricky wrote to me this week, the general effect is that they are shooting for sibling botheration, but accidentally end up at weird orgy. I think it's because the judges are mostly silent while they do this, which makes it creepy; it reminds me of those guys from Sesame Street that went "Yeeepyepyep."
“ Then twenty-five lions all simultaneously jumped on Dumbo and things went totally crazy and bloody. Anyway, the wandering part is what reminded me of Bo. There are no lions roaming the studio. This week. ”
Bo "My Body's Too Bo-Delicious For Ya, Babe" Bice (tm VeeJay) sings the somewhat inevitable "Free Bird" (1975, Lynyrd Skynyrd), introducing it via telling us how his grandmother was in the delivery room when he was born and thought he looked like Humphrey Bogart. Which is a HORRIBLE THING TO SAY to somebody's momma. So he was named Harold Bogart Bice, which is a funny and Harry Potter-esque collection of letters when you see it on the page. He changed it to "Bo" after a coolness crisis in Kindergarten. Bo Bice ("For Bos About To Rock, We Salute You" was the nickname suggested by Gimme Cat, and "Succumb to the Cult of Bo Bice!" was suggested by Phan) is wearing a really intense outfit, and his voice is not that great. We're not really getting the rock star treatment, which sort of makes sense because that's not the kind of song this is, but even still. He's pretty much phoning it in, and seems kind of lost onstage for the first time. It's weird and weak and it makes me uncomfortable. The crowd goes nuts anyway, because he's still better than everybody else, but his disinterest in this, for the second week in a row, is kind of annoying. Maybe he's just burned out.
I saw the best show on the National Geographic channel this week, called Be The Creature, where they showed different hunting strategies of different animals with, like, footage of the attacks and crappy computer graphics to explain the rationale. It was so awesome. There was this one part where they showed how lions can take down an elephant, and it was the most graphic and scary thing I've seen in a while, but there's a part where the lions cut off the baby elephant from the other elephants, and it just kind of wanders around aimlessly, tripping over its own huge feet and generally seeming to be terrified out of its wits. Then twenty-five lions all simultaneously jumped on Dumbo and things went totally crazy and bloody. Anyway, the wandering part is what reminded me of Bo. There are no lions roaming the studio. This week.
Randy loves the song, reiterates that he is one of Bo's biggest fans, and gets hyperbolic about how Bo would probably have a hit with that rendition. Paula drunkenly yells, "See you at the finals, Bo, see you at the finals," and it's so abrupt and weird that she has to start the clapping for herself, since nobody knows if she's going to blurt anything else out. Simon disagrees, and the booing is immediate and intense, which is irritating to him because it's so blatantly encouraged so we'll think there's more going on here than there is, and he totally yells at them to shut up. He explains, correctly, that the viewers are not going to be impressed with this, because it amounted to him running around like an idiot half-assing what some think of as a "sacred" song. I don't think of it as that, but I do like it, and even if I didn't I'd still be disappointed and annoyed, because honestly he just didn't seem to care whether I liked it or not. Which he'll explicitly tell us a little later. Ryan says "everybody loves a little 'Free Bird,'" and you know, I've just noticed how around Bo he always gets really country, or, like, butch.
Not Anwar, though. He'll be singing Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Love This Way Again" (1979), and he introduces it talking about how he was a shy and silent child, over pictures that demonstrate he has always been utterly beautiful. Anwar's dad is so totally cool-looking in these pictures. There's one of pre-teen Anwar smiling and playing the piano while wearing an enormous bow tie. It's cute. He starts out on a stool tonight, which if you're not familiar with the song might be your first sign of how this is going down. His voice sounds thin and cruddy, but he's still Anwar. The song is boring and not memorable until the chorus, at which point it is: still boring. His shirt is open to his pelvis. Once the power part of the song comes, his singing gets more interesting, but there are still terrible notes scattered throughout it. I still like him, on principle, but I totally thought he was going to be in the bottom three and I wasn't crying about that. I have no idea why it was not the case.
Randy says, like it's the first time anyone ever has, that he thinks Anwar is "technically the best singer in this competition," and he says, "I'm proud of what you did tonight, baby." Paula calls him "consistently pleasing to the ear," noting that she is mesmerized by the "tone and openness" of his voice. I do like his voice, but I'm not too fond of the nasality of it. I feel chastened when he sings, like it's my damn fault he'll never love this way again. Simon calls it one of his better performances in a while (true, and hella so), and notes how he is becoming "the equivalent of a blanket," meaning soft and nice. Paula, because she still doesn't understand even basic things about Simon, thinks it's a super-sweet thing of him to say. Even though he's said it like six times. I swear these people have trauma-related amnesia because they say the same damn things every week and just trade off who says it. Ryan takes pains to note the open shirt and mentions how he's noticed that Anwar "has time to go to the gym, apparently." God. Not even actual gay people are this gay. Not even when they're doing it on purpose. You know? Ryan's like the self-conscious Constantine of metrosexuals: "Did you see how I admired another man's half-naked body? I'm so totally cool with naked men and their bodies and how they go to the gym and get allsweaty" Of course, it causes Anwar to turn red and giggle like a little girl, which was so totally the desired effect.
I don't know which is which, of Hall and Oates. The blond one looks like if you took Vincent from Beauty and the Beast and gave him a really harsh chemical peel. He looks burned. And his smile is really wrong and weird-looking. ["That's Daryl Hall. I am saddened to report that I used to have a crush on him. In other news, I am oldand blind." -- Sars] The dark-haired one has been replaced by Paul Dinello, in a sleazebag costume. The blond one laughs but just seems confused about what's going on, and then Ryan says the name "Paul Young" and I go "Woo!" because there's only one place that Paul Young, 1985, and cheesy A-Fed songs meet, and it's "Every Time You Go Away," which Daryl Hall wrote. Anthony is the youngest of his family (obviously), with a brother seven years older, who used to swim with him in the Black Sea. I'm so jealous of Euro kids because they can say shit like that. What do I get? There's this really cool mall in Phoenix where I once bullied my mom into letting me watch the airplane part of the Twilight Zone movie in an electronics store, and when they finally showed that one part, I completely freaked the fuck out and everybody thought she was kidnapping or stabbing me and there was a total riot and the security guards tried to rush me to safety. And they couldn't get the real story out of either of us, because I was out of my wits and my mom was laughing too hard to explain what was going on. Actually, that story is pretty awesome, come to think of it, but, like, it's not Black Sea awesome.
“ During the phone number A-Fed bounces around nervously, to the point where he actually collides with Ryan a couple of times. It's great. They're like cute tiny blond molecules. ”
I think that they have darkened the eyelashes of old Anthony "The Amazing Technically Colorless Dreamboat" Fedorov (tm msmoz), making him look a freakish amount like a blond Frodo, and now I can't even see Anthony anymore, just damned Elijah Wood singing at me. He does a crazy little dance and is wearing some kind of enormous belt buckle on his very tight pants. I'm so over the pants of A-Fed. They never say anything new. I was going to go off on this whole "How old is Avril right now?" thing about how A-Fed makes me nervous, like a bad, bad man (1985!), but the unending tight pants and the eyelashes have made it so that that won't be an issue anymore. Anyway, the singing is just as consistent as the pants: nice and Anthony-esque and not so subtle. But I love it, and I love the song, and it's great. He's so cool with the songs he picks, because they're always the perfectly cheesy and semi-heartfeltthis is the shortest conversation I've ever had with Anna but it's kind of the point:
Jacob: So every night for a month, this lady would call in and request "Angel of the Morning," because she was in love with her garbage man and would wait out at the curb for him, and he was her Angel of the Morning. The very fucking early morning. And his name was Mike, and I always think of that when I hear this song.
Anna: What's the point of dedicating songs to people? It's so clearly unlikely that they
Jacob: -- Remember Silver Sp
Anna: -- "Broken Wings."
Jacob: I love you.
Randy says that the Paul Young version was "hot" and then says, "You know, you did your thing." Paula calls it "much better from last week" and must admit that she loves the song. She's slurring really badly here. She says, "I'm proud of you," and I really like it when she says that, for some reason. My need for approval is so intense, I want it even from Paula Abdul. What I love is how she and I feel the exact same way about the A-Fed repertoire, because it helps explain my still-fierce obsession with the album Spellbound. We're unashamedly and frighteningly dorky in the exact same way. Holla back, Paula.
Then there's this awesome part where Simon tries to remind us without actually saying it that he called Anthony "hideous" last week, referring to last week tonight as a "low point," and Randy obligingly plays the straight man to set it up, all, "What's the word you used?" And Paula, honestly trying to be helpful, goes, "Low point." And Simon and Randy ignore her and go on with the joke, and she gets it finally and shrugs like Goldie Hawn but even she is like, Well, I'm an idiot. What's my deal, anyway? Simon then tells Anthony that this week he was very good, and that makes me happy. He says it was a good choice. Ryan wonders whether the harsh stuff that Simon says every week, like, haunts him. He A-Feds around in response, basically saying that he tries to take what Simon says to heart, and they stare at each other for a while and then they throw their arms around each other and it's awkward, even though they are so similarly wee. During the phone number A-Fed bounces around nervously, to the point where he actually collides with Ryan a couple of times. It's great. They're like cute tiny blond molecules.
Vonzell sings "Let's Hear It For The Boy" (1984, Deniece Williams) after yet another karate-themed intro, this time about how she's the baby of four children (again: duh), and couldn't stand the fact that her older siblings were involved in martial arts with her daddy, so she demanded that she get involved and start training at five. That's like the cutest story. Also, she has a seriously lovely speaking voice. I could listen to it all day. So she starts the song with a very Whitney "Woo!" (think the beginning of "Emotional," because it's like exactly the same sound, which is funny because I didn't know I even remembered that song until I heard the noise) and dances around a whole bunch. She giggles on the downbeat a whole lot more than I prefer, personally, that "Hah!" sound (also a Whitney thing, from the straight-up pop days), but whatever, it's totally Vonzell and I didn't notice anything the first billion times I watched this.
The crowd is insane during all of this and having a whole lot of fun, and the singing part is very pretty, although about half the time, her voice sounds pretty rough. It's still pretty but not clear, and I guess the problem is that it's clearly not doing what she wants it to. It just sounds unintended some of the time, which is too bad because it sounds fine, but if she were in full control tonight it would be pretty much awesome. She's such a fun performer, although you have to wonder how many more of these notes she'd be hitting if she weren't having all these emotions all over the place and walking around the set and jumping up and down and being adorable.
The judges are happy she chose a well-known song and sang it well, since those are the grounds on which Nadia is obviously going to be eliminated. Randy says, somewhat ambiguously to my ears, "This is crazy, man! Another great performance!" Looks like a compliment, tastes a little confusing. Paula is wearing a hideous shirt with these weird stripes of giant sequins and looks weird and doesn't know what the hell she's talking about, all, "I think you even sang it an octave higher than Deniece," which doesn't even make sense, I think, and Will said it didn't, and based on Paula's face I think Vonzell looked at her crazy, because she looks confused for a second and then covers with, "Did you? Did you sing it higher?" Which, yeah, she did. Simon then explains to Vonzell that she will be staying and that Nadia will be voted off tonight, and she's too nice to respond to this and gets a little bit 404 as a result. She and Ryan discuss how being in the bottom three last week really "rattled" her, and she's adorable as she turns to the camera all, "Please vote for me! I did not like it!"
Because Scott is a ruiner of all things, even electronics, his pre-song package interview starts while Ryan's still introducing him, and anyway it makes no sense, because he's slow. There is much fake cheering for Scott. He "She's Gone," by Hall & Oates (1976), and introduces it with just a mind-bendingly wrong-headed story about how "everybody talks about the rockers in this competition," but he's the real rocker because when he was little he would "rock out on anything" that he could make noise with, and he goes on and on idiotically about how he loved to "rock out." Imagine baby Scott, you guys. He'd be that kid in the class where your mom would be like nervous and all, "What's that little boy's name? Is henice?" Violent special needs child makes good. His baby pictures all share that dead-eyed malevolence we've come to expect from him.